“I can live with that. Now what do we do, watch? Help somehow? Hunt down stragglers?”
“How about meet Joe at the gate and make sure none of these guys get out before Eddie can lay them back to rest?” Amy asked.
“Good idea,” I said, turning back toward the front of the cemetery and away from the naked voodoo people. Naked people I usually don’t mind. Voodoo priests I usually can deal with. It’s the combination of the two that got me all twitterpated.
We were almost to the gate when I heard the unmistakable clatter of one of life’s truest tragedies—a Harley Davidson falling sideways to rest ungracefully on concrete. A Harley is more than just a motorcycle; it’s a piece of the American collective consciousness, a piece of out zeitgeist as integral to the definition of America as John Wayne, Chevrolets, and rock n’ roll. When a Harley is in motion, it’s poetry on two wheels, Walt Whitman’s ghost cutting through the air like a Great White prowling the ocean. Even sitting still, a Harley has a barely restrained look of speed and aggression about it, like it might burst into action, all bipedal Christine, and tear apart any little sissy sport bike or God forbid Vespa that happened to park within range of its chrome-plated rage.
But a Harley knocked to the ground, lying on its side like a beached whale, all denuded magnificence and ineffectual fury, that’s a goddamned sacrilege—a defamation worse than flag burning, more visceral that ripping up a Bible, or wiping your ass with the Stephen Foster songbook. That’s the sound that greeted my ears when we were almost at the gate. It was followed by the tinkle of broken side mirror glass, then the sharp handclap of a Sig Sauer .40 pistol firing off three quick rounds.
“That’s Joe,” I said, and broke into a run. Well, more of a limping lope, really. Apparently at some point in all the zombie crushing, I’d tweaked my old knee injury, so I wasn’t moving at full speed. And really, my full speed was only every good for about twenty yards at a time anyway. I only ever needed to run from the line of scrimmage to about three yards past the quarterback. Usually by the time I knocked him back that far, the poor bastard quit struggling and I put him down.
Evangeline and Amy were better off than I was, so they sprinted the rest of the way to the gate. I heard more guns open up, along with some faint cursing, so I assumed Amy was okay. I didn’t know Sister Evangeline all that well, but Joe wasn’t much of one for profanity, and I figured it went with the whole “working for the clergy” thing. I limped along for a few more seconds, then I reached the gate and started some serious swearing of my very own.
Joe was the cause of the clatter because he was sprawled backwards across a pair of toppled Harleys. He was bleeding a little from the mouth, but he was moving and trying to get himself disentangled from the handlebars to get back in the fight. And the fight was pretty impressive, too. Amy and Evangeline were flanking a vampire, and they looked to have gotten a couple shots in already. Amy had a silver stake in one hand, and Evangeline had a retractable baton in one hand and a long dagger in the other. I took half a second to give her leather-clad form another once-over, wondering where the weapons had come from, but the vampire landed a punch on Amy that set me in motion. She rolled with the punch, but it still knocked her to her knees and sent her eyeballs to Glassyville. The vampire reached in to finish her off, but Evangeline launched herself at the monster’s back, dagger flashing in the streetlight as she stabbed the vamp in the neck again and again.
I burst through the cemetery gate just as the vamp dislodged Evangeline and flung her into Joe, who had finally gotten back to his feet. They went down in a tangle, and the vampire turned back to Amy. I drew Bertha, stopped right outside the gate, and squeezed off one round.
I got a direct hit, and the vampire’s leg below the knee disappeared. The monster flopped onto the concrete, screaming and holding its stump. Amy scooted back away from the writhing bloodsucker and pulled herself to her feet. She picked up her pistol off the ground and trained it on the vamp. I walked up to the screaming creature and booted him gently-ish in the side of the head.
“Shut up,” I said. He didn’t. I kicked him harder, and he stopped shrieking long enough to glare at me and pull himself into a sitting position.
“You shot my leg off!” the vampire yelled.
“You were going to kill my girlfriend,” I pointed out.
“That was nothing personal, she works for DEMON,” he protested.
“Just like it was nothing personal kidnapping her earlier tonight and handing her over to zombie priestesses to be killed or possessed,” I said. I was keeping my voice calm, but the more we talked, the more of his leg grew back, and as fascinating as that was to watch, I needed to get any information out of him before he was ambulatory again.
“You idiots were getting too close. I needed to slow you down. Can’t have you getting in the way before I finish with Cathy-poo.” He grinned, and I knew he was stalling.
“And what are you planning for Catherine?” I asked.
“Nothing much, just the destruction of everything she cares about and then eventually, true-death. No big deal, really.”
“Yeah, nothing much,” I agreed. “And exactly how were you planning on doing that?”
“Is this the part where I lay here and give you my entire plan so you can figure out how to beat me? I don’t think so, human!” He got his good leg under him and sprang up, claw-like fingers going straight for my throat. I hate it when they figure out my simple and clichéd plans.
Chapter 13
I sidestepped his charge and kicked him in the leg he was regrowing, chuckling a little at his scream of pain. Petty, I know, but there aren’t many times I can actually go toe-to-toe with a vampire and hold my own, especially when I’m not carrying Grandpappy’s sword, so I took my giggles where I could get them. Unfortunately for me, the pain spurred him to greater speed, and he whirled around and caught me upside the head with a backhand. I spun halfway around and dropped to one knee, the world suddenly gone all 2001: A Space Odyssey on me, which is to say, it was full of stars.
I felt the rush of air over my back as Evangeline flung herself back into the fight, very literally. She planted a foot on my shoulders and launched her entire body at the vampire, and they went down in a heap of leather and blood. I shook my head to clear my vision, hoping I wasn’t concussed. Evangeline was astride the vampire, stabbing again and again with that long dagger. The vampire blocked every blow, then bucked her off with a twisting flop that left Evangeline on her back, her knife a foot away from her grip, and the vampire on his feet.
He took two long strides toward Evangeline, reared back his foot, and kicked her in the ribs like it was kickoff at the Super Bowl. I heard ribs crack from ten feet away, and the scream she let out was bloodcurdling.
“How do you like that, human?” the vampire asked, rearing back to kick her again. I raised Bertha, but saw only empty hand in front of me—I must have dropped Bertha when I got my bell rung. I staggered to my feet and tried to charge the vamp, but he got another kick in before I got to him. Evangeline curled up in a little ball, trying to keep her ribs in roughly the right places while I bum-rushed the vampire and slammed him into the stone wall beside the gate.
He grunted on impact but brought both fists down on my back in a double axe-handle blow that drove me to my knees. I collapsed to the concrete and felt hands grab my head. This is it, I thought. I’m gonna get my head ripped off by a vampire in New Orleans.
Four quick shots rang out, and the vampire’s body jerked with the impact. I turned and saw Amy and Joe standing, pistols leveled at the bloodsucker, just plugging away. I turned back to the vampire, still on my knees, and looked up. He was distracted by the bullets punching holes in his torso, so I did the most logical thing I could think of—I punched him in the balls.
I didn’t really know if it would do anything, vampires being wired differently than they were when they were human, but apparently some things maintain because this vamp dropped like a stone. He fell to his knees righ
t in front of me, and I shoved a silver stake into his chest. I intentionally didn’t pierce his heart, just shoved the stake in enough to get his attention.
His eyes went wide and he froze. “What are you doing?” the vampire asked.
“I believe the term would be ‘advanced interrogation techniques’,” I replied. “I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers. Let’s have those things meet in the middle, or else I’ll have the point of this stake meet your heart. Comprendé?”
He nodded, so I started right in. “What’s your beef with Catherine?”
“She turned me. I served her and her family faithfully for years, and my reward was to get turned into a bloodsucking monster! Well, if that bitch wants a monster, she’s got one now.”
“Who’s helping you?” Amy asked, kneeling beside me.
“Nobody,” the vamp spat. “I don’t need any help taking out that insipid bitch.”
“You know, I’m getting really tired of that word,” Amy said. “Call me a feminist, but, oh wait, I am a feminist. So you use the word ‘bitch’ one more time, and I’ll feed you your shriveled little vampire willie.”
The vampire looked terrified, and I probably did, too. I decided to push on with the questioning before I said something that pissed her off and got that kind of attention turned on me. “Don’t give me any crap, dude. I know vampires, and I know voodoo, and I know vampires can’t do magic, so tell me who raised the zombies for you.” I also knew that some vampires could do magic, but only the really old and powerful ones. This one was really young, less than a decade at my best guess.
“You took her out an hour ago, remember? She was in the crypt with your friend here.”
“No way,” I said, giving the stake a little wiggle. “That chick had about the magical power of my left pinkie finger and couldn’t make dough rise, much less the dead. Now gimme the truth, or I’ll just perforate you and keep digging on my own.”
He said something, but it was so low, I couldn’t hear him. I leaned in, and almost bumped heads with Amy, who leaned forward at the same time. I looked at her and chuckled, and that was all the time the vampire needed to turn shit upside down. When I turned to Amy, I relaxed the pressure on the stake just the slightest bit, and the vamp took advantage. He shoved me backward with one hand, and pulled Amy forward with the other, both blocking me from getting back in at him with the stake and getting her neck within biting range.
I fell down on my butt, and he chomped down on Amy’s neck. I cringed, waiting for the spurt of blood, but all I heard was a crunch and a string of curses. I scrambled to my feet as the vampire did the same, shoving Amy away and wiping at his mouth in agony. Amy flew several feet and crashed into the stone wall around the cemetery with a sickening thud.
“You crazy bitch!” he screamed. “Who the hell wears a chain mail choker?”
“Somebody who hunts vampires, asshole,” Amy said from the ground, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs. She drew her pistol and put four rounds into the bitching vampire’s chest. “Those are silver-tipped rounds, you misogynist prick, so they oughta burn for a long time. I told you about calling people bitches.”
The vampire charged Amy but ran into a stiff side kick from me and the rest of a magazine of silver-tipped 9mm ammo from Amy. He stopped cold just outside of my arm’s reach, so I drew Bertha, pressed the Desert Eagle to the back of the undead asshole’s neck and pulled the trigger three times. Fifty-caliber bullets tore through flesh, cartilage, and spine, and decapitated the vampire as effectively as any sword. Blood splashed all over Amy and me, with a fair amount just going every damn where, and the corpse dropped to the ground.
“That was subtle,” Evangeline croaked from the ground.
“Subtle is not exactly what we prioritize with Bubba,” Amy said. She tried to stand, but had to reach out to the wall for support.
“You okay, babe?” I asked, reading her side.
“I will be,” she said. “I just took a hard shot when I hit the wall, and my vision’s a little blurry.”
“You’ve probably got a concussion, and Evie’s definitely got some broken ribs,” I said.
“I’ll be lucky if I have any that aren’t broken,” Evangeline said from the ground. “It feels like I’ve got a chest full of daggers.”
“That’s basically what you have,” Joe said. “I’ll call the local parish for medical transport and cleanup.”
“I’ll search the dead guy and see if he has any useful information on him,” I said. “Joe, you should go wherever the girls end up. They need someone to cover them while they’re getting patched up.”
“You’re right,” he agreed.
Amy started to protest, but I held up a hand. “Honey, just chill. You know you’ve got a target on your back, and there are probably a lot of things down here that would like a piece of Evangeline when she’s not at her best.”
The Hunter nodded and said, “Yeah, I’m gonna be wrecked for a while, and it’d be good if there was somebody to keep an eye out and make sure that nothing decides to turn the ER into a buffet.”
“Sonofabitch,” I said, standing up with the vampire’s wallet in my hand. I was right, he was a young one, still hanging on to a lot of vestiges of his former life.
“What’s wrong?” Amy asked, holding out her hand for the wallet. I passed it to her, open to the snapshot I’d found. “Oh shit,” she muttered. She looked up at me, brow furrowed. “You gotta go.”
I was already clicking my comm on and off to no avail, so I pulled out my phone and dialed “Skeeter.” As expected, no answer. I picked up Joe’s motorcycle from where it lay on its side and turning the bike around to point back to our hotel.
“What’s going on?” Evangeline demanded.
“Ponté,” I said. “He played us. He’s the voodoo priest, he’s the one trying to take over New Orleans. He’s the one trying to get revenge on Catherine.” I straddled the Harley and kicked the motor to life, feeling the hungry power beneath me. There was a well-dressed police detective about to answer some real uncomfortable questions.
“Revenge?” Joe asked. “For what?”
“For what he saw as the ultimate betrayal,” I pointed at the pieces of vampire scattered on the ground before me. “For turning his baby brother into a vampire.”
Chapter 14
I continued to piece things together as I rode for our hotel, Joe’s motorcycle cutting through traffic and pedestrians with ease. Ponté said his family had worked for Catherine for generations. Apparently that went sideways somehow with Little Bro, whose name was Andrew according to his driver’s license, and he got turned. Then he went rogue, and Ponté decided to use his insanity to keep Catherine’s attentions diverted while he raised a shitload of zombies and took over New Orleans. Or turned it into an amusement park for the undead, I wasn’t really sure what his overall plan was.
I pulled the bike up on the sidewalk in front of our hotel and ran for the doors. The valet took one look at me, wild-eyed, covered in blood and zombie guts with Bertha in my hand, and hid behind his key rack. The doorman held the door and pulled out his cell phone the second I was through, but I had Amy coordinating with local law enforcement from the back of her ambulance so I wasn’t sweating getting arrested. The lobby security guy was obviously trained to be discreet, and he walked calmly toward me as I ran through the lobby toward the elevators. He fell into stride with me, trying to divert my attention and get me somewhere that I wouldn’t drip blood on his carpets.
“Sir, if you could come with me, I’m sure there’s—” His words cut off sharp when I shoved him into a square marble pillar and stuck Bertha into his nostril.
“I am a government agent in pursuit of a dangerous fugitive. I have shot a large number of very dangerous men tonight and my superiors will reward me by overlooking a little collateral damage. Unless you want to be that collateral damage, you want to get on the elevator with me, turn the knob to emergency, and get us to the fourteenth floor as fast as possible. Otherwise
, I will be forced to turn this lobby into a goddamn abattoir. Do you understand me?”
He looked like he couldn’t believe I knew the word “abattoir” but otherwise seemed sufficiently terrified. He nodded, and we covered the last twenty feet to the elevator in about eight seconds. I pushed the button, the doors dinged open, and we stepped in, along with a tiny elderly woman holding a toy poodle. She might have been five feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she looked up at me without an ounce of fear in her eyes.
“You done been in a mess, boy,” she said, disapproval heavy in her tone. Suddenly I was eight years old and back in Sunday School.
“Yes, ma’am, I have. And I’m afraid I ain’t done yet.”
“You gonna make a mess in this hotel?”
“I hope not, but there’s a man upstairs that’s liable to be hurting a friend of mine, and if he’s still here, it’s probably gonna get messy. And loud.”
“Well, I’m on twenty-seven, and I need my nap, so you try to keep it down,” she said, her lips pursed.
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “I’m going to fourteen, so hopefully we won’t disturb you.”
“I hope not,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I had to put a bloodsucker down, but I still remember where the bastards keep their hearts and I’ve still got my stake in my purse.”
I gaped at the little old lady as the doors dinged open for my floor. “You better go on now, son. You got ass to kick and I got a nap to take. Go with God, Hunter.”
“And He with you, ma’am,” I said as I stepped out into the hall on my floor. The security guard was looking at me with a grin he was barely holding back.
Moon over Bourbon Street - a Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 8
